Synopsis

“Dear Vittorio, you may remember me…, my name is Robert Redford”,
wrote the actor in a letter to a Borsalino family member in which he
wished for himself the same hat that Marcello Mastroianni was
wearing in Fellini's 8½. This letter epitomizes the history of the
Borsalino, a hat that became an iconic garment all over the world
but was produced with love and passion in Alessandria, a small town
in Northern Italy.

The film narrative is told by means of a commentary, partly in
voice-over and partly spoken by a shadow – a hint to the imaginary
world of movies associated with the hat. While depicting the destiny
of a family company, the film leads us through the creation and
consolidation of a brand that owes so much to the cinema.
From the interviews with direct and indirect witnesses the picture
of two different worlds emerges: the small provincial town with its
entrepreneurs, its workers and local historians, and on the other
hand the movie star system with its celebrities and luminaries
(Robert Redford, Jean Claude Carrière, Piero Tosi, Deborah Nadoolman
Landis). These two worlds merge into one dialogue, whose trait
d'union is in fact the Borsalino.

The hat owes its name to Giuseppe Borsalino, who in 1857, right after
having obtained the title of “Qualified Master Hatmaker” in Paris,
founded the first fulling plant in Alessandria together with his
brother Lazzaro. Production rose fast, from 35 hats a day to 2000 at
the end of the century. Giuseppe had two great intuitions:
industrial mass production and the opening of new markets. He
himself made manylong journeys to promote
his new hat, from Europe to Latin America, from the United States to
New Zealand. Thanks to an efficient salesmen network, by the end of
the Nineteenth century the reputation of the hat's high quality was
established.Teresio Borsalino took over the company at his
father’s death in 1900; still the road to success was paved with
obstacles. His cousin Giovanni Battista, who felt betrayed after
being pushed out of the family business, opened a rival hat company
in Alessandria – “G.B. Borsalino fu Lazzaro & C.”. The two companies
engaged in a commercial battle fought with manifestos and industrial
films, a battle that endured until the Antica casa madre bought the
Nuova Borsalino in 1938. In the first two decades of the
Twentieth century Borsalino’s fame grew in every continent, boosted
by ad campaigns aimed at consolidating its
traditional middle-class
clientele, as well as reaching the expanding cultural and movie
industries. From that moment on, the company looked at new ways of
brand promotion, amongst which modern industrial movies of the
highest quality.

The new course of Borsalino coincided with the birth of Hollywood's
star system, together with the explosion of mob films with their
fascinating gangster characters. The likes of Al
Capone, Lucky Luciano and John Dillinger wore Borsalinos, and the
movie industry looked at them for inspiration. It was through the
film noir genre that the Borsalino entered into mainstream culture,
becoming a synonym for “hat”. Gangsters, cops and private eyes all
wore a fedora, a wide-brim hat that cast a dark and mysterious
shadow on the actor's face. The Borsalino rapidly spread
across all genres, appearing in adventure films, romantic comedies
or musicals – it defined roles, professions, style and class. The
hat became an object with unique gesture's capacity. It could
trigger passions, tears or laughter. More than that: it was a
purveyor of symbols that were becoming essential in the cinema
industry. In 1939, at the outburst of World War II, Nino Usuelli followed his
granduncle Teresio at the helm of the company: it was the worst time
ever for Borsalino, which had to go through the hardships of war,
the German occupation, the bombings of 1944 and foreign markets
closure.But the real decline would come after the war, and mostly
during the 60’s, as the cultural revolution and the onset of
individualism began to replace a patriarchal and conservative
society.With the economic boom and the subsequent automobile mass
consumption, the hat loses its role as a daily use garment, and
sales sink in few years.

The company is sold in 1979, and
for Alessandria this means the downfall of generations of hatmakers.
Cinema too experiencesa big change in both
its aesthetics and values, yet, disregarding the hat’s fate, it
doesn't cast it off. Indeed, cinema will build the myth of Borsalino
as we now know it.

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